did he want to have this protracted battle that would take attention away from the fiscal cliff debate, the economic debate where he's clobbering the republicans and put it in some other area where he's not necessarily as strong? now, in terms of the enemies, i think what it was is certainly you have people with the knifes out like john mccain and lindsey graham but just as tellingly, you didn't have a lot of democrats ready to go to the mattresses for her. so, yes, they could have gotten her through, but it's not a fight a lot of the democrats were relishing having. i think it had very little to do with benghazi and i think as joy pointed out, it had a lot to do with pique, and john mccain's pique at the way susan rice treated him during the 2008 campaign. >> dana, this critique of ambassador rice having sharp elbows, i have heard that, frankly, as a sexist slur by men very often who make that kind of critique because they don't like the fact that a woman has to work ten times as hard to get into a position of seniority. you know, so all this talk of her having sharp elbows, did she r